“Leah, I love your hair like that!”
“What do you think, Leah. Should I trade my snack with Chavi?”
“Do you want to come to my house after school, Leah? My mother is baking cookies.”
“Leah, you are so smart!”
All the girls loved Leah. They shared their favorite pencils and always let her go first when they played hopscotch in the yard. She was the first girl to be asked over for a playdate and no one ever interrupted her when she was talking. There was no doubt that Leah was the most popular girl in the class.
But, even though Leah was the most popular girl in class, the other girls didn’t really like her. In fact, they were a little bit scared of getting on her bad side. Everyone knew that you had to be nice to Leah. If not, you might find yourself left out of the next game of dodge ball or being whispered about during recess.
Leah can best be described as a class queen. Class queens are girls who are conceited, not very nice, and rule over everyone. They cut girls out of their inner circle of friends and are always surrounded by a group of girls fawning over them.
Bullying and Girls
From the teacher’s perspective, it is often difficult to detect a class queen. As girls get older their peer interactions become less physical and more cerebral. Girls bond by sharing stories, hopes, and dreams, whereas many boys bond over shared interests such as baseball. Since girls bond differently than boys, it makes sense that when they bully it would be different too. While teachers are often on the lookout for physical bullying, they might miss the verbal bullying that is typical of girls.
Whereas male bullies will generally chose to attack a girl or boy who they do not like, female bullies (or class queens) will choose someone who they see as a rival. They will use tactics such as alienation, ostracism, exclusion, and spreading rumors to harass their peers. Girls will form alliances with other social groups in order to become more popular and have higher social status.
Girls use relationships to bully each other. This starts as early as preschool, when a girl realizes the supremacy of “I won’t be your friend anymore.” Relationships are of the utmost importance to girls in elementary and high school. They are the measure girls use to evaluate their own worth. By the third grade, the esteem and friendship of peers is nearly as important to girls as that of their families, and is more important than the esteem of their teachers. If someone threatens a girl with removing her friendship, she is using the most powerful weapon in her arsenal. By threatening to withhold friendship and approval from other girls, she can effectively control a group of friends. Whereas bullying by boys is often addressed and condemned, social bullying by girls is usually brushed off as cruel but normal social interactions.
Below is a list of some of the tactics that class queens employ in order to keep their high social standing:
- Playing jokes or tricks designed to embarrass and humiliate
- Deliberate exclusion of other kids for no real reason
- Whispering in front of other kids with the intent to make them feel left out
- Making mean facial expressions, rolling eyes, and giving dirty looks
- Name calling, rumor spreading and other malicious verbal interactions
- Being friends one week and then turning against a peer the next week with no incident or reason for the alienation
- Encouraging other kids to ignore or pick on a specific child
- Inciting others to act out violently or aggressively
Effects on the Victims
Girls who are bullied socially can be seriously scarred. Loss of friendships and social status is emotionally damaging and isolation can be unbearable for the victim. This is especially true for girls because they place such a high value on friendships. In addition, many victims believe that they are to blame for the bullying and therefore deserve to be isolated. This can lead them to become more isolated and socially inept, causing a further drop in self-esteem.
At its most severe, social bullying can lead to clinical depression and anxiety. And, many times, girls who experience bullying will become reluctant to go to school – and their grades will suffer as a consequence.
How Can Parents Help
For the class queen:
- Get serious about consequences. Just because there are no physical wounds, it does not mean no real harm is being done. What would you do if your child was hitting another girl? Treat your daughter with respect, but let her know in no uncertain terms that bullying will not be tolerated.
- Instill empathy. Ask your daughter to “walk in someone else’s shoes” in order to feel how they feel. Get her involved in community service projects that help her see the plight of others. Empathy is not an innate emotion and therefore you can help your daughter develop it through careful coaching.
- Role-play. Your daughter might simply not be aware that she can act in other ways. Act out different situations – as this will both give her an alternate course of action in the future and help her see the other person’s perspective.
For the victim:
- Encourage outside friendships: Get your daughter involved in activities within school and outside of school that expose her to a different group of girls. Without the class queen making her feel unworthy, your daughter’s self-esteem will soar when she realizes that she can make new friends.
- Journaling: Expressing her feelings in a safe and private manner, will help your daughter work through her pain. Journaling can also help your daughter express happy feelings as she experiences them.
- Home as a “put-down free zone”: Do not allow people to put themselves down in your home. Create a code word that indicates negative language. If people in your home say something negative about themselves, such as, “I’m bad at writing” or “I look so big in this outfit,” use the code to signal that it is not okay. This will make your home a place where positive self-esteem is of the utmost importance.
Bullying, whether with boys or girls, is a serious issue that must be addressed in all of our schools today. But, hopefully, with a little bit of elbow grease, we will be able to ensure that those class queens are transformed into the shaina maidelehs we all know they truly are inside!